Earning the Vote

[The Grand Nudger]

Why 16? (not 18, 21, or 13 etc)

Cant be trusted with  beer, can die for your country or vote on issues that will effects millions for decades.  I'm not sure if that's supremely weird or exactly right.  Embrace the power of and, I guess.  

All that is true, but it still relies on the good will and honesty of the politician. They know they're doing wrong in many if not most cases.

I don't trust pols. I want the electorate to be educated in order to more quickly smell the skunks.

I'm not interested in trusting the good will and honesty of a politician any more than I'm interested in trusting the good will and honesty of a bank teller.  If a bank teller knowingly makes materially false statements about my account we don't say "well, that's just banking".  No...no.  Only in politics can you be rewarded for what would cost you a minimum wage job.

If this is the best we can do and anything else is pie in the sky fantasy - then any suggestions we may have about improving it are polishing brass on the titanic. The improved version will be a shinier example of the same turd. We the people are not the problem. We don't vote for these assholes and haven't in decades. They are in power because, over those decades, they engineered minority control which they seek to seal in the short term. They do not have policies or ideas for solving the problems we have and this is why they could not allow competence on any such thing to be a requirement - either official or just by norms™. They are all het up about some better civics education, themselves, as it allows them to shift the focus and the blame from their own malfeasance or incompetence onto people who will then bicker amongst themselves. Not that they would deliver it. They would reliably deliver reich wing revisionism and call it civics - which is especially absurd in the context of american history, as you don't really have to engage in revisionism to offer reich wing civics......